Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 221

CONGREVE (WILLIAM)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £3,500 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

CONGREVE (WILLIAM)

Autograph letter signed ("WC"), to his close friend Joseph Keally of Kilkenny, sending what news he can ("...No man that I know (without exception of any) is able to make any Conjecture of what is intended by the proceedings at Court. There are those who yet are of Opinion the present Parl.t will meet again. if that should be, it can onely be because the next in all appearance will not differ so extreamly from it, as some have believ.d..."), giving his service to all friends and adding in a postscript: "Ld Rivers sets out on Monday for Hannover. on some errand of importance & is dispatch, not hard to guess" [Lord Rivers, an opponent of Marlborough, had gone on a peace mission]; with integral autograph address leaf ("To Joseph Kelly Esqr/ in Dublin", deleted an readdressed in another hand "Killkening"), postmarks; docketed "37"; tipped into a fine copy of Baskerville's three-volume edition of the works in early 20th-century brown morocco gilt, (1761), one page, wafer-seal, light dust-staining where fold for delivery and exposed, neat guard, overall in fine, fresh and attractive condition, small 4to, London, 10 August 1710

Footnotes

A RARE LETTER BY THE GREAT RESTORATION PLAYWRIGHT: in all the originals of some fifty-six letters by Congreve are known, from a total of about seventy-five of which the texts are known. Ours is from the series of forty-four letters Congreve wrote between 1697 and 1712 to Joseph Keally whom he had met in 1685 when the two attended Kilkenny College together. All but one of this series was published in Literary Relics by George-Monck Berkeley, the great-grandson of Rebecca Monk Forster, Keally's sister-in-law. At some after 1789 the collection was dispersed. At present the originals of thirty-three of the letters are unlocated, their texts known only from Berkeley. Ours is one of the hitherto lost originals (see Peter Beal, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, ii, pt. 1, 1987, pp. 137-9; and John C. Hodges, William Congreve: Letters & Documents, 1964, no. 40, where the Berkeley text is printed).

Additional information

Bid now on these items

ADVERTISING POSTERfor 'The Suffragette' newspaper, [c.1913-1914]

ARCHITECTURE - STUART (JAMES) AND NICHOLAS REVETT The Antiquities of Athens, 4 vol. bound in 2, 1825-1830

ILLUMINATED ADDRESS – CLARA CODD Illuminated printed address signed by Emmeline Pankhurst, [1909]

ARMENIAN - HISTORY, THEOLOGY AND PRINTING. Group of books/a map in Armenian, c.1825-1901 (12)

MUSIC & RECORDINGS – ETHEL SMYTH Collection of printed music, song sheets and records, [c.1911-1912]

BANK NOTES - MANUFACTURING BRADBURY (HENRY) On the Security and Manufacture of Bank Notes, FIRST EDITION, Bradbury and Evans, 1856